“If you can be kind and compassionate and solve the problem, why would you not be?”

Once in a while, a story is better told backward. Laurie Briggs and Christine Lottman’s story is one of them. The quote from Briggs, above, is the conclusion of their story. It is also a jumping-off point for a community conversation.

Lottman and Briggs, who are friends and Clifton neighbors, knew before they waded into the highly polarized issue of bow-hunting deer in Cincinnati parks they could be putting a target on their own backs.

Bambi lovers is what people who question the practice are often called. They’re dismissed as uniformed, unrealistic or that worst word ever – emotional.

Briggs is an attorney who works with insurance companies on regulatory compliance. Lottman is an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati and a social worker. They regularly review research, have good heads for statistics, are informed about city issues, understand public policy, are particularly known for fair-mindedness, and can be trusted not only to grasp complex and thorny issues but to resolve them in a collaborative and creative way.

They also live close to Mt. Storm Park and Rawson Woods Nature Preserve and consider the deer within them to be both beautiful and emotionally inspiring. And they aren’t afraid to admit it.

Of the being-too-emotional issue, Briggs says, “The premise of a question like that is that emotion about our relationship with nature is inappropriate somehow. But humans have minds and hearts, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. What would be problematic would be if we said we can’t bear the thought of killing the deer, but we don’t have any alternatives.”

So Briggs and Lottman have spent the last month researching alternatives.

After tracking down studies, investigating programs to manage deer populations, reviewing state regulation and talking to national experts, they’ve found two approaches they think show great promise for the two city parks that they live close to and are advocating for. They want city officials and the park board to revisit the issue of bow-hunting for those parks, and seriously consider the alternatives.

The first is a fertility control program in which deer are immobilized, surgically sterilized, tagged, given antibiotics and pain medication and then released. Because they remain in the environment, they reduce the number of new deer coming in, and the sterilizations slowly shrink the size of the herd.

The second is the use of PZP, a vaccine that causes infertility. It works best when a herd is fairly isolated geographically, and it requires booster shots, but medical advances are extending the time before they’re needed.

Nationally, these approaches come up in discussions of controlling deer herds and are often prematurely dismissed. But Briggs and Lottman have done sound research and they know that a responsible case can be made for them, that the science around them is growing, that their benefits are better documented and their limitations more accurately understood.

The women also know that any size deer herd can still present traffic dangers. They acknowledge that an uncontrolled deer population can wreak havoc on an ecosystem and be the source of its own demise. And they agree that both of their alternatives will take time, money and more patience than killing the deer with bow hunting. Which is why they’re already strategizing how to raise funds and recruit volunteers to make these approaches work.

They also know some other things that can be dismissed by critics but are the essence of being both human and humane.

That, in the end it’s short-sided – or insincere – to think we can enjoy nature without having empathy for the living creatures in it. That deer in parks aren’t problems to be eliminated but vulnerable animals caught, through no fault of their own, in increasingly complex circumstances. That finding a gentler solution than killing them may be the mark of a both enlightened and practical community.

In the end, it circles back to Laurie Brigg’s simple, profound question. “If you can be kind and compassionate and solve the problem, why would you not be?”